There was an old hovel near the house, but nearer the river bank, which their father had first erected–even before building the house itself–when he came to the ox-bow, and for years this hovel had sheltered the cattle. But the fall before he died the pioneer had erected a new and better stable and shed, quite handy to the house. The children, therefore, had long considered this hovel their own especial playhouse. At spare moments Enoch and Bryce built a stone and clay chimney and laid a good hearth in the old structure, and now they planned to have the party here, where they could do quite as they pleased.
The girls had scoured the woods for beech, hazel, and hickory nuts, and Robbie Baker came over on his horse with nigh a bushel of peeled chestnuts which his father brought him from Manchester way after the first frost. Then, there were potatoes to roast and a wild turkey which Nuck had shot two days before and hung in the smoke-house. The bird was not plucked, but after being entrailed was stuffed with chestnuts to give it a flavor and then rolled in the tub of sticky clay brought up from the creek bottom. This great ball was put in the fire early so that by supper-time it would be done to a turn. The pigs’ tails had all been saved and cleaned, too, and being likewise rolled in clay were baked in the ashes.
The girls had brought flour bread and made Johnny-cake, and although there was no tablecloth, the long board table was roomy and fairly groaned under the good things heaped upon it. The ball of mud, all hard and red now and cracked like a badly burned brick, was rolled out upon the hearth and Enoch broke it with one blow of the axe. The hard shell fell apart and to the burned clay adhered every feather and pin-quill of the great gobbler which would not have weighed an ounce less than twenty-five pounds. And the flesh was done to a turn.
In the midst of the good time, while the fun waxed furious, the door of the hovel opened and there stood in the opening the tall, slim figure of Crow Wing. As he had come unbidden to the stump burning, so he came now unexpectedly to this frolic. The white children welcomed him boisterously, for his people had moved away from the Walloomscoik and for months he had not been seen near Bennington. But Crow Wing had evidently not come to join in the merrymaking. His face was impassive and much older in expression than it had been the year before. And in his hair was a bunch of eagle feathers which showed that, to his own people even, he was now a brave and no longer a boy.
“Umph!” he grunted, drawing the blanket draped from his shoulders more closely around him. “Harding–me talk to you!” He looked boldly at Enoch, and the latter waving the others back, followed the Indian out of the hovel. Without speaking or looking behind him Crow Wing led the white boy to the riverside, and some distance from the hovel. There he halted and pointed suddenly across the stream in the direction of that place in the forest where Enoch had once seen the mysterious white man sitting beside the campfire.
“’Member?” asked Crow Wing, flashing a keen glance at the white boy.
“The man in the woods!” exclaimed Enoch. “You wish to tell me something about him?”
“Umph! He come again. Look out. Crow Wing tell you, because white boy strong–know how to fight. Watch ’em sharp!” and with this brief declaration the Indian youth strode away and the astonished Enoch watched him disappear in the tall brush along the creek bank. He went back to the merry party at the hovel with a heavy heart and not until after the last of the visitors had gone home–the boys swinging pine torches and giving the warwhoop to scare off any lurking wolves or catamounts–did Enoch find opportunity to tell his mother of Crow Wing’s warning.
“Simon Halpen is surely coming to evict us,” he declared. “I am sure it was he I saw in the forest last year. And now, taking advantage of our being lulled by hopes of peace, he will try to strike an unexpected blow as Colonel Reid did.”
“The neighbors will help us,” the widow said.